


Teach Me

by Rhysanoodle



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 22:53:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15716751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhysanoodle/pseuds/Rhysanoodle
Summary: Feyre wakes in the middle of the night to discover her mate has been hiding a particular skill of his from her for all these years.





	1. Chapter 1

My eyes shot open. Blinking quickly, I realized it was still the middle of the night, and felt around for Rhys, longing to snuggle against him and let his soothing touch chase away the nightmare I’d just had, but his side of the bed was cool, as if he hadn’t been there in hours. **  
**

I reached down the bond, finding a strange sort of sadness there, and leapt out of bed, determined to hunt down the source of his melancholy. As I made my way through our estate, I began to hear a tinkling of notes coming from the drawing room. As I approached, I could make out more of the reduced version of the symphony which Rhys was playing.

It was one of my favorites. One which we’d gone to see on multiple occasions when it was being performed in the Rainbow. And it never failed to bring tears to my eyes, evoking a raw emotion in me that was hard to place.

We’d bought the pianoforte when we’d moved in a few months ago, but it had been Mor’s idea and had really just seemed like a decoration for us until now. I hadn’t even realized Rhys knew how to play – and that he was so talented, on top of that.

I walked in a trance to him, pausing when I reached the doorway. From behind, I could see that he was still shirtless, having at least put a pair of loose pants on before wandering in here, and he was hunched over the keys, furiously pounding at the notes as he crescendoed towards the climax.

He was still fully unaware of my presence, lost in the soaring melodies. I crept up behind him, and pressed my torso up behind his, planting a kiss in his hair and wrapping my arms around him. He shivered at my embrace and finished out the last few lines of the piece before letting his head fall back against my chest.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked, voice still raspy in the after-effects of the nightmare.

“I saw it again,” he whispered, hardly able to force himself to say the words. “The day my mother and sister were murdered. I couldn’t fall back asleep, and I think I just needed to come in here. To play.” I moved to sit next to him on the bench and laid one hand on his back, stroking it, and trying to calm him. I knew these were some of the worst of his nightmares – it had been centuries, and they still haunted him. I hated that it was difficult for even me to comfort my mate and sent that thought down the bond, along with a loving caress.

“She taught me to play, you know?” I had no idea. A tear slid down his cheek. “When I was only five, I heard her playing a song once and thought it was the most magical thing I’d ever heard. I told her so, and she promptly scooped me up in her lap, and showed me the ropes.” He finally turned his head to face me, the tears flowing more freely now.

My heart broke at the sight of my mate in so much pain. I knew there was a happiness hidden there as he remembered her teaching him as a child, but the fresh pain of the nightmare was enough to hide it deep inside him.

Desperate for more contact with him, the only way I could imagine to get closer to him, I shifted into his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck and kissing away the tears. The desolation in his violet eyes was destroying me, my own nightmares completely forgotten in the wake of his. He was silent for a minute, attempting to recollect his composure.

“After she taught me how to hold my fingers above the keys…” he unwrapped my arms from his neck, gently spun me to face the piano, and demonstrated by grabbing my hands in his own and delicately positioning them above ten ivory keys in front of me. Once mine were in place, he covered them with his own and began slowly guiding me through the motions.

“We’d sit for hours like this. She patiently taught me how to play my scales.” I fumbled some as his speed picked up a bit, as if he was lost in his reverie while guiding me through a scale. “Once I had a grasp of the basics, she began showing me how the keys I’d been pressing matched with the notes on the page. By the end of the month, I was able to play some short, simple songs. I continued honing my skill, and for years, every once in awhile, the two of us would sit down and perform a duet.”

He paused our playing and continued on, “Every time I play, I’m reminded of her. Sometimes I can go for months or years without playing. Other times I’m just compelled to play, and I can’t stop myself. There are just some emotions that can only truly be expressed when I’m playing music. I also try to lose myself in it…” A brief pause.

“After I returned from under the mountain, I was a wreck. Anytime I felt you through that bond, anytime I sensed you being intimate with… _him_ , felt how much you loved him, I would winnow to my palace atop the Court of Nightmares and play non-stop for hours. I would slam my fingers against the keys so roughly, so fervently, that the notes would echo throughout the mountain range. Sometimes I lost myself so completely that I would forget to eat, to sleep. It helped me forget, but it wasn’t enough.”

Bile burned in the back of my throat at the thought of my selfless mate so affected, so wounded by my actions those few months. Before I came to the Night Court and found my true home. Here. With him.

“Teach me,” I breathed. I was unsure if it was completely intentional on his part as notes began to flow toward me down the bond, filling my head, and matching up with the way he had begun to guide my hands across the keys once again.

It was significantly slower and clunkier, but after a minute, I recognized the piece as the one Rhys had sent me in my cell under the mountain. 

I turned and smiled at my mate, coaxing a small one out of him in return.

“I want to learn, to be able to keep up with you, so I can sit side-by-side with you when you have these nightmares, and be there for you.”

“I would love nothing more, darling.” He placed a kiss on my temple.

“But let’s begin for real tomorrow,” I murmured, yawning as I realized how exhausted I was now that my own fears weren’t plaguing me anymore.

He scooped me into his arms, and carried me back to bed, where he wrapped us in his wings, and I fell peacefully back asleep with him humming a tune in my ear.


	2. Chapter 2

“Orrin, slow down!” I yelled from over the banister. **  
**

It wasn’t even breakfast time, and already he had popped out of bed in a frenzy this morning and was trying to chase his Uncle Azriel around the foyer, delighting in making the larger Illyrian try to duck and dodge his grubby hands while Az tried ever-so-cautiously not to knock anything over with his wings.

I caught the gaze of the Shadowsinger, giving him my best apologetic smile. At six years old, Orrin was a powerhouse, a never-ending fountain of energy which we were hoping would one day be well-directed into ruling the Night Court with honor. He was only a few years away from his first visit to Windhaven, where Rhys and I would move for his adolescent years to give him the same training my mate had been succumbed to in his adolescence.

A sudden wailing noise came from over my shoulder. That would be my niece, Ava. I motioned to Az that I’d take care of her, relishing the relative peace and quiet she’d afford me once she was freed from her crib. At least compared to what was now occurring downstairs.

Her mother was already out tending the garden, but I was still greeted by a giggle and the most adorable grin as I walked into the nursery and Ava realized who had come to get her out of bed this morning.

As I approached her, she pulled up on the bars and got into a standing position, miniscule wings flapping aggressively. They’d just begun to start unfurling last month, and, with any luck, they’d be fully formed by the time she reached one year old.

They still wouldn’t be strong enough to carry her weight for a few years yet, but I missed the days before Orrin was raring to go, demanding that anybody with a set of wings begin teaching him the ropes of flying. Now it was all I could do to keep him grounded when we weren’t able to watch his every move. 

Rhys and I had been trying for another child since not long after our son was born with no luck. Hopefully this time it would be a daughter for Rhys to no doubt spoil rotten.

I cherished any time I got to sneak away and care for Ava, grateful that Elain and Az had come to live with us on a more full-time basis not long after she was born.

* * *

After changing her and summoning a bottle from the kitchen, I walked down to the drawing room where the piano sat. It had been gathering dust for months, neither of us able to find much of a spare minute to play with all the chaos going on in our little household once we’d managed to finish our official duties.

I missed it. The late nights where Rhys and I would just sit for hours, hammering out familiar melodies, trying to recreate symphonies we’d heard performed in the Rainbow. He had been patient with me from the beginning, not minding the nights where it was a significant struggle as I tried to learn how to decipher the clefs and key signatures on the page. 

Rhys always caressed me down the bond, soothing my nerves whenever I’d get so incredibly frustrated that I still stumbled after months of playing, reminding me that he’d spent years learning to become decent, and centuries trying to master it.

Now, whenever we were awoken by nightmares, we usually also had another bedmate who had heard us and wormed his way into our bed. We’d stay silently still, sometimes just glancing between ourselves and our precious boy, praying he never had to experience the trauma we’d been subjected to — and reminding ourselves that we’d made it out. And we were so incredibly blessed with how our lives turned out.

As I sat on the bench, seating a babbling Ava in my lap, I found myself reminiscing of that night all those years ago when my musical journey began. Unable to contain myself, I began to leisurely play the melody Rhys had helped me tap out on the keys all those year ago — our song. I closed my eyes, content to let the music take me away. As I grew more familiar with playing again and began to regain my muscle memory, I increased my tempo, catching up to the intended speed, the notes soaring out for beneath my fingers.

Just as I was reaching the end of the first movement, I was pulled from my reverie by a small beating of wings and some plodding footsteps.

“Wow, mommy! That was amazing!” Orrin exclaimed, shuffling up to me and tugging on my tunic. An out-of-breath Az was close on his tail, looking for all the world as if he’d tried to give me a few more moments of peace. “How’d you make it do that?” 

“Well,” I explained, “I just press down on the keys, and each one makes a different sound. See?” I demonstrated by pressing and holding the middle C key. “When you press many of them at the same time and string them together, you can make a song. Just like this.” I performed a quick practice etude.

The look in his small violet eyes was nothing short of awestruck. “Please. _Pleeeease_ will you teach me how to do that?” he pleaded, giving me a look he knew made me melt most of the time.

I thought about it for a moment before coming to a decision. “Go ask your father, Bud, okay?”

He face sunk. “But he’s not even home right now. It could be houuuurs before he’s here to teach meeeee!” He drew out some of his syllables like molasses as he began to tear up, and I could sense a tantrum about to erupt out of him.

“Yes, but he’s a much better piano player than I am,” I said conspiratorially. “He taught me. You wouldn’t want to miss out on this opportunity because you couldn’t wait a few hours, would you?”

Az shot me a grin and added, “You’re so lucky. I’ve been trying to get him to teach me for years, but your mommy has been keeping him all to herself.”

Orrin’s eyes lit up as he quickly agreed and began to drag his uncle with him to the kitchen, stating that he needed to eat up now because he had to be full and ready to go whenever Rhys came home.

I laughed to myself, struggling to keep from relaying this precious conversation to Rhys but knowing that the surprise would be worth it when he got home from the Court of Nightmares.

* * *

“Daddy!” The shrill yell could be heard throughout the estate, as Rhys no doubt winnowed into the foyer early that afternoon.

I left my seat at the kitchen table to go greet my mate with a kiss, and saw that Orrin was already tugging at his pant legs in anticipation.

“Hello, Feyre darling,” Rhys purred at me as I came into view, the familiar greeting paired with the longing on his face making my toes curl with desire, even after all these years.

“You’re home early,” I replied. I gave him a swift peck on the cheek, but did little more to encourage him, knowing that the two of us wouldn’t be able to satisfy our own urges until much later tonight, when the little one was finally in bed.

“Mor’s been doing her job incredibly well lately. Remind me to buy her a present for having already finalized most of the weapons deal with Keir before I even arrived this morning.”

By this point, we could both tell Orrin was about to burst from excitement as Rhys knelt down next to him and asked, “And how has your morning been, kiddo?”

Orrin cringed slightly at the nickname, but barreled on, intent on relaying his wish to Rhys.

“Daddy, will you teach me how to play the piano? It’s the coolest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, and Mommy and Uncle Az told me you were the best piano player ever.”

Rhys’ eyes never left Orrin’s face, but I felt a brush against my mental shields. I opened up the familiar sliver just for him.

_The best ever, Feyre darling?_

_The one and only. He may be embellishing a bit, but who could blame him? You’re his hero._

_That’s a whole lot to live up to._

_I’m sure the most powerful High Lord in history will have no problem training the next great virtuoso._

_Do you think he’s actually serious about wanting to learn?_  

A slight tinge of worry was sent along with that question. I knew it wasn’t for our son, but for Rhys. For the fact that he might get his hopes up only to have Orrin grow frustrated or bored of it quickly and never show interest again.

_You were younger than him when you had your first lesson, and look at you now. It’s all he’s talked about for hours now. I might have told him you could start as soon as you were done working._

_Cruel, wicked thing._

At that, I shut him out, not willing to let him turn this conversation into a flirtation when there were more important things to do right now.

“I’d love to,” Rhys responded out loud, ruffling Orrin’s hair. “Why don’t you give me a few minutes to change and grab a snack, and I’ll meet you in the drawing room.”

* * *

Half an hour later, I crept into the doorway, and watched as Rhys, with Orrin on his lap, guided his small hands ever so slowly over the keys, demonstrating how to make his fingers curl properly, and letting him know not to get too discouraged by the fact that the size of his hands made it slightly more difficult to spread his fingers out correctly.

Orrin was raptly paying attention for the first time in years, soaking it all in, desperate to begin truly playing a song. It was the most focused I’d seen him in awhile, and it made me smile, remembering the moments he couldn’t, where as a toddler, his father would seat him on his lap, and serenade him.

As Rhys sensed me hovering in his periphery, the bond was filled with a sense of joyous melancholy. I knew the words he didn’t even need to say — the memories that were now coursing through him of his mother teaching him to play and the peace he was finding at finally being able to pass this piece of her onto our child. To give him a sense of the grandmother Rhys so wished was still here to see this day.

I sent a loving caress down the bond, pouring my heart out to him in the way that was best done mind-to-mind, as a tear slid down his cheek.

_Thank you._

**Author's Note:**

> All characters are the property of Sarah J. Maas


End file.
